


Frostbite

by reillyblack



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (pretty moderate tho), Alpha Derek, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Alternative Werewolf Lore, Bottom Derek Hale, Cultural Differences, Dubious Consent, Fuck Or Die, Homophobia, However you want to read it - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Magical Tattoos, Mates, Non con tag added just in case but it is intended as dub con, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex Magic, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Top Stiles Stilinski, alcohol use, fear of bottoming, hmmm how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-03-29 04:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reillyblack/pseuds/reillyblack
Summary: The Wolves found him nearly frozen to death, curled around a tiny fire made of his desperation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Frostbite (Traducción)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15275838) by [Igni1LB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Igni1LB/pseuds/Igni1LB)



> Lots of similarities to Present, but I tried to make this one different enough to be its own story. Also.... ElfQuest, anyone? Didn't realize how much I was drawing from this comic until about halfway through.
> 
> Non-con tag: Stiles is penetrated after he expresses discomfort and then later feels violated. Lots of miscommunication and misunderstanding due to language differences, so that’s why I view this as more dubious consent. As the writer, I felt Stiles kept his agency and ability to walk away from the situation, but as a reader it certainly may not feel that way, so beware.
> 
> Anyway, this story is basically an excuse to write more magical sex. Originally PWP, but then plot happened.
> 
> (ALSO I haaaaate old-timey language, but it just needs to be there for this one. I tried to keep it at a minimum, but Stiles is a simple village boy, so.)
> 
> Spanish translation available by the amazing Igni1LB here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/146026093-frostbite-traducci%C3%B3n

Stiles had been wandering in the woods for two days, ever since the raid that destroyed his village, when the Wolves found him.

Soldiers had raised his village to the ground with fire and death and pillaging. Stiles couldn’t even find enough food left in the stores to scavenge, all spoiled or stolen. He didn’t know the name of the new king that had been overthrown. They were supposed to thank the king by name before eating their meals, but Stiles and his father privately refrained from honoring someone they didn't know and who had never done anything real for them. Then that king had gone and gotten himself overthrown by some military uprising, leading to the kind of raid that destroyed Stiles's village. Stiles was glad, now, that his father had passed from a sudden chest pain earlier in the year. It was a miracle that Stiles had survived the raid; his father would have surely been murdered in the chaos.

Stiles had been tending the horses when the barn was set on fire. The horses panicked and knocked him to the ground as they ran from the burning building. Through some extraordinary luck, Stiles woke after the chaos had died down, though he was nearly suffocating under a pile of burnt wood. The rest of the village was still in flames. He crawled to safety, the smoke smothering his every movement, and watched the flames die down in shock. When everything turned to piles of ash, Stiles tried the pantries and storage huts, but found nothing.

He took what he could find -- a blanket, a singed water canteen -- and wandered numbly toward the woods, hoping to find some kind of shelter before the cold hit. But winter was on their doorstep, and it came knocking the next day. Stiles woke the second day shivering under his blanket and several inches of snow. He started walking again, his mind still numb and his feet soon numb too, in search of some sort of shelter.

He tried in vain to make a fire as night set again and the only shelter he had found was the trees, but the wood was too wet and the spark wouldn't fly. He pushed the snow to the side, his hands shaking harder than his body, and curled up on the ground under the wet blanket, giving up. He would join his fellow villagers in the other world soon. He never really had a chance on his own. As he closed his eyes, warmth sprung before him, the light of a fire flickering behind his frozen eyelids.

That was how the Wolves found him, with icicles dripping down his cheeks and his lips turning blue. One of them gathered Stiles in their pelt — which was how Stiles knew what they were. The musky warmth of the animal skin woke him from his deathly sleep, the bump and sway of the shoulders carrying him the only other sensation. He was still cold under the pelt — freezing — but he felt alive. He took in the bodies moving around him, all covered in the pelts of wolves, and closed his eyes again. 

His father had always warned him about the Fae. He never dared to venture into the forest before for fear of them. Most of the time they lived in harmony with humans, but there were stories — kidnappings, murders, humans chained in servitude to the creatures for generations — and Stiles knew enough to be afraid. Stiles didn't know what these Wolves wanted from him, but they could have left him to die, so he let himself hope.

The next time he woke it was to the sight of natural rock walls and the glow of a real fire. He was sandwiched between two Wolves, a pelt warming his front and a clothed body warming his backside. Stiles oriented himself slowly, barely moving so as not to alert his captors. He took in the glow of the roaring fire, the smell of smoke, and the large cavern filled with Wolves, most of which were sleeping in similar small groups like his own.

A hand moved on his chest, bright eyes peering over his shoulder. 

"You wake." Her accent was thick, but her words understandable. "We thought you would enter the long sleep."

"Still alive," Stiles managed over his rising fear. She was beautiful in a way only a Fae could be — with long, summer-red hair and bright green eyes, and her skin an otherworldly perfect. The pelt around her shoulders was red as well, the hair on it long like her human form. Stiles shrunk back only to find another Fae woman had turned to nuzzle into him. This brunette Wolf muttered something in the Wolf language into Stiles's skin, sleepy and soft, and Stiles's fear grew despite the comfort from his captors.

"You are Spark," the red-headed woman told him as she sat up. "Heat from inside moves outside."

"I don't know what that means," Stiles admitted, staying carefully still so he wouldn't jostle the brunette curled against him. "Do you mean to burn me?"

The red-headed woman tilted her head to the side, her eyes dancing with amusement.

"Can not. You can burn us. Will you?" she asked him.

Stiles shook his head, still not understanding. In response, she placed a delicate hand on his bare forearm. The red-headed woman's eyes began to glow and he felt the hand on his arm heat up. Stiles yelped and jerked his arm away as the red head laughed, looking triumphant.

"Share with us and we will share with you," she told him on a smile, raising her hand to show it to him. It glowed bright white, but the glow faded within moments. Her eyes seemed to hold their glow for longer.

It was the first time Stiles had seen magic. He rubbed his arm, fearful.

"I have nothing," Stiles admitted, his voice wavering. "My village was burned."

"You survive because you are fire."

Stiles shook his head, despair rising in him at the reminder.

"I survived so I could die another way."

"No long sleep." The red head shook her head, gesturing around the quiet cavern. "Safe with us. Come and eat."

Stiles considered those words. Her English was rough and strange, but 'safe' was hard to misinterpret. He nodded and rose to follow her across the room and closer to the fire. A hole through the top of the cavern let the smoke from the fire rise without choking the sleeping inhabitants of the cave. Just looking at the fire left Stiles paralyzed with fear, his insides lurching. But the red head handed him strange Fae food —meat twisted with roots and seasoning that Stiles had never tasted — and sat down with her own serving of food.

"Lydia." She pointed at herself before nodding at him.

"Stiles."

"Sti-les," she repeated. "What's a Stiles?"

"Nothing. Just me," Stiles replied quietly. His mother had named him something old and unpronounceable, even for his fellow villagers, and he had never understood why.

"Scott." Another Wolf sat down next to him, a big grin on his face. He was also beautiful, but in a boyish way. "Scott," he said again, pointing at himself before he took a big, messy bite out of his food.

"No speak English," Lydia explained, nodding at Scott with something like distaste. "Only Lydia."

Stiles nodded, feeling worse despite Scott's obvious geniality toward him. So he only had Lydia to talk to here, and they barely understood each other. 

"I will teach you Lycan," Lydia said after swallowing a bite of the Fae food. "Learn quick. Easy."

"Scott." Scott touched Stiles's hand, smiling brightly. Stiles felt it heat up again and quickly withdrew his hand. Scott ignored his reaction, holding up his own hand to examine the glow, his mouth twisted with pleasure. "Scott," he said again, looking at Stiles expectantly.

"Stiles." Stiles pointed at himself, wondering if that would satisfy the Wolf. 

Scott looped an arm around his shoulders and nuzzled him. Stiles froze in the Wolf's grasp, terrified until the Wolf drew back, still smiling.

"Scott thought Stiles would not enter long sleep," Lydia explained, looking cool and unimpressed. "He won."

"Won?" Stiles wondered, leaning subtly away from the overly friendly Wolf. "What did he win?"

"First meal tonight. Scott likes Stiles. Other wolves thought Stiles would enter long sleep. Derek hoped Stiles would live, but Scott knew."

"Who is Derek?"

"Alpha," Lydia explained, her voice dropping and her eyes fluttering over Stiles's shoulder. "Derek likes Stiles, too."

Stiles twisted to find a Wolf watching him from across the cavern. Stiles immediately felt intimidated by the Wolf. Under his dark pelt, Stiles could tell his shoulders were broad and his body powerful. His eyes seemed to glow red in the gloom of the cavern. Stiles's fear returned with a vengeance. Even though he hadn't eaten in days, his appetite disappeared. 

"Does Derek want to hurt me?" Stiles whispered to Lydia. Lydia blinked at him before laughing again.

"Never." Lydia shook her head. "No one hurt you. But Derek, never." 

"Scott," Scott contributed helpfully around a mouthful of food.

When they finished their meal, Lydia showed him around the caves that the Wolves used. Lydia told him they had lived there for centuries as she showed him the intricate carvings in the cave walls, and her own "room", a sequestered little cave with beautiful cloth lining the walls and the bed. She had a large mirror with a green metal frame that Stiles recognized but had never seen worked to such refinement. She admired herself in it, adjusting the pelt around her shoulders, before moving on to show him the rest of the caves.

Stiles met the Wolves one at a time over the course of the next day. They were all overly familiar and touchy. Each one held onto him until his skin heated, gaping at their glowing hands before smiling at him or touching him again in a more friendly way, like Scott had.

Scott seemed to follow him around from time to time to try to help Lydia with her tutelage. But she would get annoyed and chase him away — literally, in some cases, transforming into her wolf form and snapping at his feet until he also shifted and ran out of her grasp. 

The Wolves transformed in a second, their skin going molten and smooth as it melded with the pelt around their shoulders and their shape unmade itself into the wolf form. Stiles gasped and tried to stay very still the first time Lydia transformed in from of him, but she behaved much the same as she did in her human form — her steps dainty and her teeth sharp when she grinned at him — so soon both shapes were just "Lydia" in his mind.

Scott was much less intimidating in his wolf skin, cuddling up next to Stiles and butting his head into Stiles’s knees, similar to what the horses used to do when they wanted a treat. Although they couldn’t exchange words, Stiles found himself growing closer to the Wolf through actions — how he would bring Stiles food, brushing against him when he was frightened, steadying him as they climbed through the woods — than even with Lydia, who had devoted herself to teaching him the Wolf language, which they called Lycan, with a focus that startled him. 

Every few minutes Lydia would point at something, say the Lycan word for it, and then make him repeat it until she was satisfied. Then, a few minutes later, she would quiz him again with an alarming intensity. The first few times she did this Stiles was caught off guard, but she did it dozens of times a day so Stiles soon adjusted.

Lycan seemed to be composed of strange sounds that Stiles's mouth had never made before. It was a language that the Wolves could speak in both their human and wolf form, so it was full of growls, pitched yelps, barks, and whines. The shape of the words changed depending on who said them, and how they were feeling. The combination of sounds changed when you were out on the hunt or in the sleeping piles. Stiles couldn't make his mouth work properly at first, but Lydia hammered away at him, strict and insistent, until Stiles tried again.

The first week with the Wolves crawled by, Stiles on constant alert for signs that they were about to castrate him or enslave him or ritually sacrifice him to their heathen Fae gods -- all the worst rumors he had heard from his fellow villagers. Most of the Wolves seemed not to mind him, with the exception of a few older Wolves, Theo, and Jackson, who had no patience for his bumbling Lycan and sometimes pushed him around. Stiles avoided them and tried never to be alone when they were near.

After the first week, Stiles got used to the rhythm of the Wolves' life: sleep, eat, hunt, eat, play, hunt, sleep. Every day felt new, every excursion in some new part of the woods that Stiles had never seen before, but the actual pattern of activity had very little variation. They hid in the caves during the cold nights and ran in their wolf skins during the day to chase down various prey. They didn't till the earth the way the villagers had, preferring instead to forage their vegetables and berries. They pickled or dried what they found in their great storage caves.

Kira took to teaching him how to hunt with the Wolves, but it was slow-going and humiliating at first. Stiles wasn't used to running for miles on end, and certainly not at the pace the Wolves liked to keep. Beyond that, his human body was simply much weaker than even the Wolves’ human forms. After a few weeks of keeling over with stitches, with Kira stopping to wait impatiently for him every few minutes, Stiles finally finished a run without stopping. He was far behind the pack, but he felt high with the accomplishment.

The Wolves didn't take him out when they hunted bigger and more dangerous prey like wild boars and bucks in their mating season, but most of the time Kira wouldn't let him stay in the caves when the Wolves were out. He was expected to do as the Wolves did.

Lydia taught him how to make the soft, supple leathers the Wolves wore. She explained to him that the Wolves could shape shift wearing anything that used to be an animal's skin. However, if it had any of the hair leftover from the original animal, it would mix with their wolf pelt and make it look "messy", so it was important to clean the leather well before curing it. Stiles took to helping her with the tanning process, which she did as meticulously as she approached teaching him Lycan. It was slow and often smelly work, but it was something he could do — much better than hunting, anyway — and he appreciated feeling useful to the pack.

Scott spent a great deal of time distracting Stiles from everything he was supposed to be doing and trying to get him to play with him the way the other Wolves would play with each other. Stiles didn't know what he was doing at first when Scott kept bumping into him, snuffling and yelping and bouncing around in his wolf skin with his tail waving. The first time he tackled Stiles to the ground Stiles thought maybe his time was finally up and the Wolves were going to eat him the way the villagers' stories said they did. But Scott just licked his face until Stiles rolled out from under him, suffocating under all the slobber.

Scott was much more gentle with Stiles than the other Wolves seemed to be with each other. They seemed to be in a state of near constant play fights, which often evolved into real scuffles, the snarling echoing through the network of caves. This lasted until some other Wolf intervened or, more uncommonly, one of the fighting Wolves admitted defeat. Every few weeks, when the moon was full, the Wolves would hold official tournaments. They feasted by a giant bonfire, telling stories that Stiles couldn't understand but that captivated the Wolves easily enough. They then ended the night with a series of bloody, violent fights. The victor of these fights always faced off with Derek, and Derek always won.

The great, dark Wolf frightened Stiles more than anything else about the Wolves. Jackson and Theo were often curt and aggressive with him, sneering at his clumsy attempts to help or communicate with them, but Derek would watch him from a distance with his blood-red eyes and make Stiles feel like prey to be hunted. His gaze was terrifying and inescapable, seeming to follow Stiles wherever he went. When Stiles asked Lydia about Derek, she told him in hushed tones that he was the Wolf equivalent of a King -- except he had earned the title through winning a fight with the previous alpha of the pack.

Stiles learned later that "winning", at least in this case, actually translated to "killing". This explained to Stiles why all the Wolves seemed to show him excessive submission.

Stiles avoided him at all costs, shrinking back in the crowd of Wolves whenever Derek addressed them, or hiding behind Scott or Lydia when Derek walked past. But no matter how Stiles tried to stay out of his sight, Derek seemed to show up whenever Stiles was hurt.

One time Scott was playing with him too roughly and broke his wrist. Lydia pounced him off of Stiles, who was screaming in pain, and bit his thigh hard enough that Scott transformed back into his human skin, also screaming in pain. While Scott nursed his bleeding — but rapidly healing — thigh, Lydia fussed over Stiles's mangled wrist and growled angrily at Scott. Scott whimpered in response to her scolding, but he cowered in shame when Derek loped up to them in his wolf skin, surveyed the scene of Stiles on the ground hissing with pain, and growled low. Lydia dropped into her wolf form too and showed her neck to him, trembling as Derek padded over and examined Stiles closely with his glowing red eyes. Then he growled something in Lycan that Stiles didn't understand and stared at the two Wolves for too long before he left again.

Scott seemed humiliated after that, disappearing into the caves until dinner, when he slunk back in and licked Stiles's hand excessively in apology. He curled up too close to Stiles that night as if to reassure himself that Stiles didn't hate him for his mistake. Stiles woke up with a bunch of herbs at his feet, tied neatly with leather strings. Lydia explained to him that the herbs helped with the healing process and made him a smelly tea to drink from the leaves.

It happened again when he was trying to help Isaac with his metalworking. Stiles had noticed the fine decorations beaten into the many metal objects in the Wolves' caves, and when he saw Isaac working a piece of metal over the fire he sat down to join him. He was terrible at it and ended up dropping the shaper on his foot. Crying in pain, the dark wolf seemed to appear in front of him out of nowhere. Isaac was on the ground in an instant, whimpering as Derek's growls rose in the cavern. He sniffed at Stiles's purpling foot and stared long and hard at Isaac.

When he left again, Isaac helped Stiles bandage his foot and then refused to let him learn about metalworking anymore. He shooed him away whenever he tried to approach. The next morning, a new kind of herb was left at his feet, tied in an identical way to the first. Lydia took Stiles to Deaton, and the older Wolf made him a poultice with the herbs to rub on his horribly bruised skin.

Stiles had thought that the Fae possessed all kinds of magic, but living with them he only ever saw them change their skins. They healed flesh wounds at an inhuman pace, but they brewed the rest of their medicine the way the villagers had. They caught their prey with their teeth. They made their fires with flint and stone. They tanned their leathers by hand. When Stiles remembered the fire that had appeared before him right before he would have frozen to death, he wondered if that had been them sending their magic ahead of them before they came upon him. Perhaps it was intended to keep him alive until they could reach him. He figured they were hiding the rest of their magic from him until they deemed him trustworthy.

The other magic he saw them do happened when they held his bare skin for too long, which they were fond of doing. He got used to Wolves he didn't know well putting their hands on him until their eyes glowed and their skin sizzled against his skin. He was often held, or embraced, or snuffled at. The Wolf babies liked to sit on his lap and touch their hands to him until their eyes glowed, giggling and smiling at him and then repeating the process over and over again. He didn't care for it, but he didn't feel he could tell them to stop doing it, so he adjusted. After a while, it became normal, like so many other strange things. 

One afternoon soon after he came to the Wolf pack, Lydia sat him down and tried to explain it to him.

"Stiles is Spark. Stiles can put heat and magic in us. Good if a little, bad if too much."

Stiles blinked at her, not understanding. Lydia looked frustrated, as she often did when he didn't understand her. She grabbed his forearm. 

"Too hot. Spark. You will burn him. Must learn control."

Her eyes grew bright as Stiles's skin slowly grew hot where she touched him.

"Who?" Stiles asked.

"Try now," Lydia insisted, gripping his arm harder. Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed to flinch. "Try."

"Try what...?" Stiles frowned at his sizzling arm, hotter than usual. 

"Hold it back, Stiles," she growled at him, her eyes almost white now. "Cool it."

" _I'm_ doing that?" Stiles asked, realizing that she was talking about the heat between their skin. "I thought you were."

"Stiles heats us," Lydia told him, panting with pain now but refusing to let him go. "Stiles can burn us. Try not to."

"Alright," Stiles reacted to the desperation in her voice and stared hard at where Lydia was holding onto his forearm. He imagined cold water running between their hands, stealing the heat from their skin.

"Good," Lydia whispered, her eyes dimming somewhat.

"It's working?"

"Focus."

Stiles focused, closing his eyes to better imagine the cold water rushing over their skin.

"Good."

When Stiles opened his eyes again, Lydia's eyes were glowing only faintly and she was smiling a little.

"We will practice often," she told him, removing her hand from him. From then on, Stiles tried to cool the heat when the Wolves would touch him. At first he needed to concentrate to do so, but after a while, like most things, it became second nature.

The Wolves gave him his own little cavern, which started out horribly bare as he had come to them with nothing but the clothes on his back. Even though he technically had his own space, he noticed that they rarely left him alone. Either Lydia or Scott or Kira was always next to him or supervising him when he fell behind on the hunts. In the moments of quiet or when his new Wolf mentors were busy, Stiles sat in his own room and wept over the loss of his life before. He missed his father deeply, and the horror of what had happened to his village still played over and over in his mind when he closed his eyes at night.

His deep-rooted loneliness grew the longer he spent with the Wolves. After a few months of spending almost every second with Lydia, Stiles took a chance and tried to kiss her. She sprang back as though Stiles had hit her, looking around to make sure that no one had seen. They were alone in her cavern, though, and no one was even within hearing distance.

"You must never do that," Lydia scolded him, rubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Yes," Stiles mumbled, feeling somehow both numb and like something disgusting. "Alright."

"To anyone," Lydia clarified, her eyes bright and wary. "Wolves not allowed touch Stiles like that."

"So I... I am not allowed to take a wife," Stiles clarified.

"Take?" Lydia snorted as though Stiles had said something funny. Stiles was breaking inside with loneliness, though, and he didn't see the humor in the situation. "No."

"Because I'm a human, not a Wolf."

"Because." Lydia's eyes darted around the cave again, searching. She lowered her voice. "Not allowed."

"I... I will be alone here forever," Stiles realized with horror. "No one will want me." 

"Not alone." Lydia shook her head, looking somewhat concerned by Stiles's reaction.

Stiles was confused, but he was tired of trying to decipher her broken English and tired of trying to fit his own thoughts into incomplete Lycan, so he let it go and left for his own room for the night. He felt Lydia's eyes on his back, but she didn't follow him.

He cried himself to sleep that night, missing his village more than ever before.

He had many days like that -- up and down, terrible and then okay. He learned the Wolves' ways, but he missed his human ways almost every day. He liked Scott and Lydia and Kira, and sometimes Isaac, but he always felt different and strange in the Wolf pack. He was never quite at home, always on the look out. He still suspected that he had merely sidestepped death, rather than evaded it altogether. He felt it when Jackson would follow him sometimes at night, trying to frighten him with his glowing Wolf eyes. He felt it when the pack left him behind as they hunted and he bent over his knees with his vision fuzzing at the edges. He felt it when the wolves healed themselves over and over again in mere seconds, while it took Stiles weeks if not months to heal his many injuries. Death was just waiting for him around the corner -- there was no way he could survive for long with these unearthly creatures.

He'd been with the Wolves all through the winter when he left the caves on his own for the first time. Spring was peaking through the snow and he wanted to pick the new berries from a thick of bushes he had found on a previous hunt before the other animals got to them. He left in the morning when most of the Wolves were still sleeping, happy to escape from the pack for a little while and be on his own.

The peace of the quiet forest didn't last long.

He had only picked a few handfuls of berries when an enormous eagle swept from out of the trees and landed too close to him. It tilted one large, unwavering eye toward him and stared at Stiles for longer than a normal bird might have. He realized it was another Fae, its gaze too intelligent and its body size far too large. Stiles quivered with fear, suddenly wishing he had brought Scott along with him.

The Eagle spread its great wings and let out a piercing screech. It sounded strangely gleeful, even to Stiles's human ears. Then it stared up at the sky as if waiting for something. After another heart-stopping moment, it shifted into a tall woman with flowing golden hair and golden eyes like the eagle. She clucked at him, smiling wide as she approached him with heavy footsteps.

Stiles stumbled and crawled back on the mossy ground, the berries in his gathering pouch scattering around him in his panic. She was almost to him when a shadow blurred his vision and an angry snarl filled the air.

The pack filed around him in the next few seconds, snarling and yipping as they darted between the trees. The Eagle woman was forced to transform and take off from the ground to avoid their snapping jaws. She hovered in the air for a moment, her long wings beating the air with such power it left the ground below them bare. The dark wolf directly in front of Stiles snarled again. She cried out once more before she lifted up and disappeared above the tree cover.

The pack shifted around Stiles like a river of bodies flowing around a rock, a collective mass of nervous energy. Derek turned and surveyed them before snarling loudly to silence the cacophony of yips and whines from his pack. They quieted immediately, but their bodies didn't, still shifting and moving in varied forms of restless twitching.

Lydia was at his side in the next second, shifting into her human form to tug on his hand.

"Go. To the caves. Now," she ordered, her face white.

"What happened? Who was that?"

"Must go now," Lydia said again, tugging his hand. She transformed back into her red pelt and ran close by his side until they reached the caves. She wasn't the only one -- the whole pack ran around him, slowing to keep his clumsy pace rather than leaving him behind as they often did on hunts. It frightened Stiles more, uncertain why they were behaving abnormally. 

Once they were back in the caves, Lydia transformed again, touching his arm hesitantly. Stiles felt their skin grow hot, her eyes brightening to an unearthly glow as she stared at him.

"Hold it back," she whispered.

Stiles cooled his skin with a thought, watching her eyes dim to a faint glow.

"Remember how to do that," Lydia's voice was soft, trembling. She sounded desperate. "Don't hurt him. Please."

"Who?" Stiles asked, bewildered. He realized then that there were Wolves watching them. Most of the pack was still around them, shifting restlessly and casting nervous looks their way. Stiles shivered under the attention, pulling his arm away from Lydia and rubbing the skin where her hand had been. It looked normal, like nothing had happened.

Lydia bowed her head to the ground. Just as Stiles was about to ask her why, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Stiles," the word sounded strange and too gravelly on Derek's tongue. The dark Wolf had never spoken to him directly before, and now his blood-red eyes were too close for Stiles to escape them.

Stiles dropped to his knees like Lydia, nerves spiking through him as he bent his head and hoped he was acting respectfully toward the alpha. The hand on his shoulder felt heavy.

"Stand up," Lydia whispered to him.

Stiles slowly stood, keeping his eyes on the ground.

"Go with him." Lydia kept her head down, but she glanced up briefly to make eye contact with him. "Don't hurt him. Focus."

"Stiles," Derek said again, the hand on Stiles's shoulder pulling him away from Lydia. He wanted to grab onto her, the one Fae he could actually talk to, but he wasn't crazy enough to disobey Derek. They left the Wolf pack behind in the sleeping cave in silence, feeling their eyes on their back. The Wolf took him away, down the winding caves and into a new cavern that Stiles had never seen before.

It was dank and enormous, but it was unmistakably personal. A bed stood in the corner, covered in different animal furs. A large shelf with books sat off to one side. Stiles saw a clearing in the middle of the floor where he thought he could make out old blood stains, which frightened him. He imagined the Wolf slitting his throat suddenly and tensed under Derek's grip.

But Lydia had told him not to hurt Derek, which implied Stiles _could_ hurt the Wolf if he tried. It was hard to imagine at the moment, with the Wolf's powerful hand gripping Stiles's shoulder, but he kept that in mind and it lessened his fear.

Derek let go of him and circled around to face him, standing at the entrance of the room. His eyes looked different up close, more like gleaming rubies than the bloody eyes of a monster. They were almost hypnotizing. Stiles realized too late that he wasn't supposed to look directly into them and turned his eyes to the ground in submission. 

Derek's hand came up to gently touch his chin, lifting his gaze back up to him. After a moment, Derek said the Lycan word for "spark" and put his hand on Stiles's bare skin. It was the first time Derek had drawn heat from him, his hands big and rough on Stiles's skin. Stiles cooled the touch immediately, watching the Wolf's eyes brighten to a faint glow and nothing more. 

Derek looked pleased. His lips turned up and he murmured a faint praise to him in Lycan. Then the hand on Stiles's arm slid down to curl their fingers together. Stiles's heart beat faster as Derek pulled him over in the room to the bed, sitting and drawing Stiles down next to him. 

Stiles wasn't sure why they were sitting on the bed. Sometimes he and Scott would sit on Scott's bed and try to converse in broken Lycan, but otherwise Stiles had never been in another Wolf's bed before. He wasn't entirely sure why they had them -- most of the time they all slept together in the sleeping room. Well, he knew _why_ they had them, but he was a man and Derek was a man, so that couldn’t be why he had brought them there.

Derek sat with him for a moment in silence before he rose again and went to the table by the bookshelf. He poured liquid from a graceful metal pitcher into two stone cups and returned to the bed with the cups in hand. He gave one to Stiles and sipped slowly from the other, his red eyes still watching him.

"What is happening?" Stiles wondered in English before trying to translate it into Lycan.

Derek squinted at him and Stiles knew he had translated it poorly. Derek put a hand on Stiles's knee and smoothed the soft leather there as he murmured a response in Lycan that Stiles could barely understand. He caught the Lycan word for "spark" and an action verb -- change.

"Spark," Stiles repeated in Lycan. "Change. Spark changing?"

Derek nodded slowly, like maybe he thought that was close enough. Then he pointed at himself and repeated what Stiles had said until Stiles realized Derek was the subject of the sentence.

"You will change the spark. You will change me," Stiles tried to translate this into Lycan.

Derek nodded, praising him again. He stroked Stiles's knee, fingers curling under his thigh. Stiles ignored it because the Wolves were always touchy with him. 

"Change me how?" Stiles wondered.

"To a Wolf," Derek said in Lycan.

Stiles stared at him, wondering whether the past few minutes had been entirely in vain and he was now terrified from a simple mistranslation.

"Derek..." Stiles started slowly in Lycan. Derek nodded in encouragement. "Change me..." Stiles swallowed. "To Wolf?"

Derek nodded. He gestured with his own goblet for Stiles to drink from his cup. Stiles drank as directed, and he was glad he did. The sweet wine poured over his tongue and soothed some of his anxiety. He had tasted the Wolves' sweet wine only a handful of times, and always on special occasions, like at tournaments. Now he relished the simple comfort.

He drank until he drained the cup. Derek watched him, sipping much more slowly from his own glass.

When the wine was gone, Derek took his cup from him and filled it again. Stiles was already feeling warm and kind of numb, with a strong undercurrent of anxious.

Derek spoke to him in soft Lycan, gesturing occasionally and pausing as if to check Stiles understood. Stiles didn't understand, so Derek kept talking. Stiles realized he was repeating something to him -- he heard the same words and phrases, but in different combinations. Spark. Change. Wolf. Derek.

Tears welled up in Stiles's eyes as he shook his head, unable to understand, yet knowing it was important.

Derek moved closer to him, his hand traveling farther up Stiles's knee to stroke his hip. It was strange and uncomfortable, and not the way the other Wolves touched him. Derek murmured something, his ruby eyes concerned, and he pulled Stiles closer to him. Stiles went rigid as the Wolf embraced him, felt him nuzzling into his hair and running a hand along the back of his neck.

"Safe," Derek said in Lycan, his words brushing over Stiles's ear. "Safe."

"Safe," Stiles repeated the Lycan word, not trusting the meaning behind it. But he knew it well. Lydia had said it to him over and over again.

Then he felt Derek's lips against his neck and his whole body seemed to grow hot in an instant. He jerked away.

"No," Stiles said in Lycan, panicking. It couldn't be. He must be misunderstanding again. "Man." Stiles pointed at Derek, then at himself. "Man. No."

"Yes," Derek said calmly in Lycan. He touched Stiles's knee again, and this time it meant something different to Stiles. "Man," Derek agreed. Then he gestured to himself. "Man. Yes."

"No," Stiles said, but he was unsure now. How could it work? He had never even heard of this at the village. He had not seen any male couples in the Wolf pack. It wasn’t even possible... was it?

"Yes," Derek said again, sounding patient. The hand on Stiles's knee traveled up along his thigh and Stiles's heart hammered in his chest.

”How?” Stiles challenged him.

Derek laughed in response, his ruby eyes sparkling.

”How,” he repeated it like a joke. Stiles couldn’t help glaring. Derek said something quick in Lycan that Stiles didn’t catch. Then he shifted closer to Stiles on the bed, parting his knees around him and sliding his hands around Stiles’s waist before he kissed him.

Stiles went very still, shocked that this was happening, shocked that it even _could_ happen. But it was... nice. He liked being touched like this, although he’d never thought of the Wolf in such a way before. Now that Derek was kissing him, though, he thought about the Wolf’s terrifying beauty and strength. It sent a thrill through him, pleasant and electrifying.

When Derek pulled back, his eyes were glowing. Stiles’s mouth tingled with heat.

”Hot,” Derek murmured, looking between Stiles’ eyes. 

Stiles realized abruptly that he had a natural defense against the Wolf — Derek could not touch Stiles's bare skin for long without Stiles burning him. Lydia had warned him about this long ago. She said it the first time she taught him to control the magic in his skin — “You will burn him”. _Him_. Lydia had been talking about Derek then, which meant that she knew this would happen.

Which meant that Derek had been planning for... whatever this was... since then.

It didn’t make sense. Derek was the alpha. Stiles figured he could have anyone in the pack that he wanted. Why had he picked Stiles — a male, and a very average male if the opinions of the village women were to be believed. Lydia didn’t want him, so how could Derek? All Stiles could think to explain it was that the Wolves needed to change him into one of them, and this was the only way to do it.

”Hot.” Derek pulled Stiles from his realizations. Both hands rested on Stiles’s thighs now, almost casually. Derek was watching him closely.

He needed Stiles’s permission to touch him. Right. Stiles stared at him, frozen in indecision.

”Safe,” Derek whispered again, his eyes hooded with what Stiles now recognized as attraction. “Yes.”

Feeling like he was stepping into an abyss, Stiles nodded slowly.

This time when Derek kissed him, Stiles tried to respond. He timidly touched Derek’s waist. Derek seemed to growl in encouragement, which was both frightening and arousing. Still terrified, Stiles put his focus into not burning Derek when his hands slid under his clothes, skimming over Stiles’s stomach to pull his tunic up and over his shoulders. Normally it was easy to control the heat in his skin, but now his nerves made it difficult. Stiles shivered in the cold air, turning away in embarrassment as Derek looked him over. But Derek seemed to move on quickly, kissing Stiles’s shoulder and neck to draw him back into the moment and out of his self-consciousness.

His mind whirled as he watched Derek take off his pelt, leaving his muscular shoulders and back bare. He never saw Wolves without their pelts. Lydia had told him they couldn’t be replaced if they were lost. The wolves wore them while sleeping, hunting, and playing. If they were damaged, the Wolf only had to transform into their Wolf skin to heal them. 

Derek carefully laid the pelt down on the bed amongst the other furs before removing the rest of his clothes.

Stiles wondered if many Wolves were turned this way — once humans, then transformed through the carnal act with a Fae. He had little doubt in his mind that he was not special to Derek. After all, the Wolf had barely spoken to him before this. He wondered how many in his pack Derek had changed like this. He wondered if he would be trapped forever as part of Derek’s pack as a result.

There were worse fates. Maybe someday he would actually learn Lycan. Maybe if he became a Wolf they would let him take a wife... or a husband? And it was nice to feel wanted. His body was responding to Derek’s touch, to the sight of him stripping his clothes off, so Stiles turned off his fears and anxieties as best as he could. He waited demurely and let Derek undress him, still clueless as to the next steps. He’d never done this with a woman, let alone even _thought_ of doing it with a man.

Derek seemed determined to rouse him from his waking sleep, biting lightly at his skin in pleasant areas like his nipples and lower abdomen, watching Stiles’s face closely all the while. What Stiles responded to Derek seemed to do more often. He roughened his touch when Stiles groaned involuntarily to a particularly strong push from Derek down onto the furs of the bed. He anchored his hands at Stiles’s hips when Stiles shivered at a touch there.

Stiles watched in amazement when the Wolf slid down between his thighs, nuzzled at his groin, and then swallowed him down. His ruby eyes held Stiles’s gaze all the while. He licked and suckled at Stiles like he enjoyed it, his hands sweeping along Stiles’s hips and abdomen and sending shivers to wrack his body. Stiles groaned at the feeling of the Wolf sucking him, and Derek rumbled in response.

Stiles clutched at the furs to keep from fucking up into the Wolf’s mouth, but it was hard to control himself. The Wolf seemed enthusiastic about any kind of participation on Stiles’s part, including thrusting up into his mouth, so Stiles gave away to the temptation after failed attempts to quell the urge.

At first it was just enjoyable and exciting. Stiles had never felt anything like it, and while he had heard from other boys of this kind of act, he somehow never expected to experience it. He didn't think he would ever look at Derek's mouth the same, not now that he knew what it looked like while Derek was swallowing him down.

Derek watched him endlessly, his mouth stretched wide over Stiles's throbbing erection. His eyes pulsed suddenly with light and Stiles lost his control and released himself in the Wolf's mouth. Stiles panted in surprise, watching as the Wolf swallowed his release and licked his lips, his eyes glowing brightly.

"S-sorry," Stiles tried to say, horrified with himself for losing control like that. He was certain he wasn't supposed to do that, but it was incredibly arousing to watch Derek swallow.

Derek soothed him in Lycan, rubbing both his hands along Stiles's thigh before resting against Stiles's lower stomach. Heat followed his hands where they flowed until Stiles got control over himself again and cooled the touches. Derek mouthed at Stiles's hip bone in response and petted the thick of hair by Stiles's flagging erection.

A warm, hazy kind of silence followed as Stiles recovered from the experience and Derek let him have that time to himself. But the weight of him on Stiles's legs and lower body was a reminder that Stiles had yet to reciprocate — and he knew enough about these kinds of acts to know the Wolf would expect it from him. Nerves destroyed his peaceful afterglow as he worried about how the Wolf wanted him to respond.

Before he could ask — or, more likely, act out — what the Wolf expected from him, Derek seemed to sense that Stiles was growing tense again and took him back into his mouth. Stiles groaned loudly, shuddering at the sudden warmth and focusing on cooling his skin. He was hard again in what seemed like an instant, swelling to fill the Wolf's mouth completely.

This time Derek worked him over thoroughly, bobbing his head as though he had synced up with Stiles's inner desires. Stiles felt his body go completely boneless with the pleasure of it.

Soon, however, he felt a pressure from behind him and realized the Wolf was pressing against his backside. Stiles thought it was very strange, but maybe the Wolf thought it would be arousing for him. The pressure increased, the wolf massaging him there, until he felt something slick slip inside.

"No." Stiles panicked, shaking his head. He sat up as he guessed at the Wolf's intentions, a bolt of electricity coursing through his spine.

Derek lifted off of Stiles's shrinking erection, his ruby eyes observing him quietly. He withdrew his slicked finger from Stiles's body, and Stiles relaxed somewhat without the intrusion.

Derek shushed him, smoothing his hands over Stiles's thighs. But Stiles could not be soothed this time.

"I can't," Stiles tried in Lycan. "What you did. I will do that."

Derek stared at him, his expression blank. Either Stiles had botched the translation or Derek wasn't going to let him refuse. He sat up, his expression still strange, and asked Stiles something in Lycan. Stiles didn't understand it. It was difficult to concentrate on translating with the Wolf's body so exposed to him like that. His erection was full and jutting between his thighs, calling Stiles's attention and anxiety to it.

Stiles moved to settle between the Wolf's thighs in a similar position to what Derek had done for Stiles, but Derek stopped him with a hand to his chest. His ruby eyes were cool as he directed him over onto his stomach.

Dread filling him, Stiles went. Sweat started on his body as Derek's hands smoothed up his thighs and squeezed lightly at his buttocks.

"Safe," came Derek's voice over his shoulder. The hands massaged him lightly before he felt that pressure between his crease again. He bit his lower lip to stifle his protestations as the slicked finger slipped inside, breaching him farther than before, although slowly. Everything in Stiles felt tense, focusing on that one point on his body. "Hot," Derek warned him.

Stiles thought about burning the Wolf for a moment. In the end, he cooled their bodies instead.

"Trust," Derek whispered to him, digging further into his body. It felt strange and unnatural and Stiles didn't like it. Actually, he hated it.

"No," Stiles told him, tears stinging his eyes as his discomfort grew. He heard Derek sigh before withdrawing from him again and flipping him onto his back. Stiles refused to look at him, feeling shaky and a little queasy as he stared resolutely at the cave wall next to them.

"Stiles," Derek said flatly, like he was searching for the right explanation. "I... need."

"Need?" Stiles asked, his voice tight. "Or want?"

" _You_ need," Derek clarified. "Spark needs."

"I need..." Stiles trailed off, refusing to look at him. "That?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Derek said something Stiles didn't catch in Lycan. Hands smoothed over his skin again, comforting him.

"For changing."

Stiles’s breath caught. There wasn't a lot of room for negotiation, then. There wasn't any negotiation to be had, actually, if that's what Derek needed to do to change him to a Wolf.

He thought about leaving then. He really considered it. He didn’t think he would be thrown out of the pack if he refused the alpha. Lydia would be upset with him, but she was upset with him daily when he forgot Lycan words.

He chose to stay. He wanted to be a Wolf. He couldn’t keep up with the pack in this weak human body anymore.

Biting back his tears, Stiles slowly flipped over onto his stomach.

"Stiles."

Stiles buried his face in his arms, dreading the next few minutes. He could always burn Derek if it was too much, but if he wanted to be changed he would need to endure.

"Stiles," came Derek's voice again, cajoling him. Concerned. Stiles ignored it, burying himself in his misery and preparing himself for this impending humiliation.

The heat of Derek's body covered his own, the Wolf nuzzling at Stiles's hair and neck. Stiles let their touch grow hot out of spite before cooling it with a thought. Derek rolled them when the temperature flagged, flipping Stiles yet again onto his back and caging him in with his powerful arms. His ruby eyes sought Stiles's own, but Stiles avoided them.

Derek hesitated before climbing over his body. He stroked down Stiles's sides, one hand anchoring on his chest to hold him down and the other curling over Stiles's softened length. He settled himself under Stiles's thighs, which Stiles let happen with a sort of weary acceptance, focusing on looking away so he wouldn't have to watch the Wolf penetrate him.

Instead of breaching him again, however, Derek manipulated his soft erection until he grew reluctantly hard again. Derek's own firm erection nestled next to Stiles's growing one, reassuring him somewhat about the Wolf's immediate intentions. When Stiles felt oil along his length, Stiles grew too curious to keep ignoring him, looking down to see Derek preparing both of them with a bottle of oil from under the furs on the bed. He capped it and noticed Stiles's attention had returned. His ruby eyes flashed as he took them both in hand, holding Stiles's gaze while he stroked them slowly in one oiled hand.

Stiles let himself enjoy this kind of attention, grateful that Derek had chosen not to force anything more on him. He tentatively grabbed at Derek's thigh, which the Wolf smiled at, his eyes never leaving Stiles's face.

The hard warmth of Derek's length against his, compared with the squeeze of his powerful hands, soon had Stiles panting, his hips straining against the bed as he tried to move in time with the Wolf's motions. Derek hefted Stiles's thighs up more on his own hips to change the angle so he could increase his pace, driving them both toward a quick release. Stiles curled his nails into the Wolf's thigh in warning as a familiar feeling built in his lower abdomen, his balls tightening in preparation.

As soon as he began to spill into Derek's hand, the hand on his chest holding him down turned to iron and he felt Derek's hips shift, down below his balls and pressing up quickly into his backside. Stiles cried out in a combination of pain and pleasure as Derek breached him while he was still orgasming, the burn of the intrusion offset by the ecstasy of his release.

As soon as he had the strength, Stiles tried to push him off, but the Wolf's hold on his hips and chest was solid. Stiles's weak struggling did nothing. He felt the Wolf pulse inside him and watched his expression tighten with pleasure, his eyes beginning to glow as Stiles let go of his control over the temperature between them in anger.

Derek stayed inside him until he was finished, or maybe the heat just became too much. He had to release Stiles from his grip, too, as Stiles burned him intentionally. Derek flexed his hands as soon as he took them off of Stiles's skin, obviously pained. Stiles drew his legs up to his chest, reaching under his thighs to feel where the Wolf had penetrated him. Warm liquid dripped out of him, and Stiles brought it to his eyes to see if it looked any different from his own — it was supposed to turn him into a Fae, after all, so he expected it to look magical. But it looked the same as his own, white and milky.

He felt strange. Shaky, but pleasantly so. A little sore, but not as bad as he had anticipated.

Angry that Derek tricked him.

But... he thought he would bleed. He thought it would be torturous. There was no blood on his hand.

Derek tried to touch him again, but Stiles glared at him and withdrew from his attempts, huddling over on one side of the bed. Derek made a noise of frustration and sat back on his haunches, considering him for a moment.

He tried telling Stiles something in Lycan, but Stiles shook his head and stared at the cave wall, refusing to listen.

Derek gathered up his pelt from the other furs on the bed and arranged it carefully in the middle of the bed. He gestured for Stiles, pointing at the pelt.

Stiles stared at him coolly, still hugging his legs to his chest.

Derek huffed and glanced around the room as if looking for someone to help him. Or maybe someone to witness how Stiles was behaving and commiserate with him.

"Needed to," Derek tried to defend himself eventually. "Needed to change Stiles."

Stiles sneered and looked away.

Derek moved closer, and Stiles would have moved away but he was at the corner of the wall and Derek had him trapped on the bed. Derek sat there next to him for a long moment, breathing quietly and considering him.

"Pain?" Derek asked him eventually, his voice low and rough.

Stiles assessed himself. His buttocks had throbbed at first where Derek penetrated him, but it faded quickly. He shook his head.

Derek said something else in Lycan. Stiles stared at the wall, not understanding.

"Forgive?" Derek asked instead, simplifying down to one word.

"Why?" Stiles asked the wall.

"Needed to change Stiles to a Wolf," Derek told him softly, slowly. "Stiles is in danger."

That got Stiles's attention. He turned to the Wolf — he looked mournful, his ruby eyes sad as he watched him.

"Why?"

Another unintelligible Lycan explanation tumbled from Derek's lips. Stiles stared at him until he simplified it down.

"Stiles is a Spark," Derek started again, looking patient as he slowed down his speech. "Sparks are hunted. If Stiles changes to a Wolf, no more hunting." There was a word in there, a subject word, that he didn't understand. Stiles repeated it.

Derek looked uncertain, thoughtful. Then he stood up on his knees and brought his arms out to his side, moving them up and down.

"That woman," Stiles realized. He was imitating the Eagle's movements.

"Yes," Derek nodded, repeating the word Stiles didn't know. "She and her pack hunting Stiles now. But if Stiles is Wolf, she will stop. Our pack safe if she stops."

"Her pack?" Stiles asked.

"Other..." Derek looked thoughtful, tilting his head to the side. "Fae," he said finally. It was the only English word Stiles had heard him speak. He jumped at the sound of it, wondering if Derek knew other English words.

"Other Fae?" Stiles wondered, whispering in his astonishment. "How many?"

Derek looked grim.

"All."

Stile stared at him. Derek shifted closer, risking a hand on Stiles's calf. Stiles decided not to burn him.

"Sparks are special," Derek explained softly. "Magic come from Sparks. Fae want Sparks. But, not many Sparks. Fae fight. Stiles in danger."

"Fight over me?" Stiles asked him, tentative.

"Yes."

"But if I am Wolf... no fighting?"

"Yes," Derek looked excited, pleased that Stiles had figured this out. "Wolf Spark only Wolf magic. Fae not want you."

"So, Eagles won't want me," Stiles realized quietly.

"Yes," Derek agreed, nodding. He rubbed his hand over Stiles's calf. He said another word, one Stiles hadn't heard before. Stiles repeated it on a question.

"Stiles." Derek's expression softened, his hand caressing Stiles's calf in a gentle way. "And Derek. Together." He repeated the word.

"Mate," Stiles tried it again. Derek nodded, smiling at him.

"Mate."

"Stiles just burn Wolves. No magic," Stiles told him, feeling leaden and tired. "No magic."

Derek shook his head. A strange feeling came from under Derek's hand — like something being pulled through Stiles’s skin. Derek's eyes began to glow even though Stiles was trying to cool their touch. Then Derek lifted his other hand, palm open, and a flower seemed to grow out of thin air and hover like a delicate decoration.

Stiles stared. None of the other Wolves had done that before, or anything like it. They just seemed to heat their hands on Stiles's skin, giggle, and then walk off.

"Magic," Derek murmured, his eyes still bright. "A lot of magic in Stiles."

"Wolves not use it." Stiles pointed out. "So why keep Stiles?" 

"We use. But not now," Derek told him. He seemed to scoot closer to Stiles. Stiles tensed. "Stiles use it later, when changed to a Wolf."

Stiles contemplated this new information, his worldview shifting. If he could use his own magic as a Wolf, maybe his life wouldn't be so terrible anymore. Maybe he would actually have a place in the pack, instead of just the weak human who couldn't change skins. Or do anything properly, really.

"Forgive," Derek asked him again, hesitantly reaching out to put another hand on Stiles's leg. "Sleep with me." He gestured back to his pelt, which was laid out carefully in the middle of the bed. "Stiles change into Wolf when sleeping.

"Stiles sleep here," Stiles said stubbornly, shaking off Derek's hand.

"Stiles sleep there with me," Derek argued, his voice loud but his eyes pleading.

Stiles frowned at him.

"No."

"Yes."

Stiles glared. Derek glared back.

Stiles got up and moved, angrily flopping down on top of the pelt. He buried his face in his arms and burned Derek when he tried to touch him. Derek hissed in pain. Stiles felt him lie down next to him, just shy of touching him.

"Forgive," Derek insisted quietly.

Stiles closed his eyes and tried to sleep.                                                                                                                                                                                               


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally supposed to be the last chapter, but I split it up into two. One more after this.

When Stiles woke, his whole body felt new.

He stretched against the furs and felt the way his limbs pulsed with vitality. He inhaled deeply and smelled the musk of the pelts around him, processing those smells in categories rather than as a whole: Derek, Wolf, wine, fire, semen.

Stiles rolled over to the edge of the bed, stretching again as he stood. He felt powerful -- like he could leap into his new skin and run for miles and miles. But as he stood from the bed, a strange tugging sensation started in the middle of his chest, not quite a physical feeling but close to it.

He turned, searching for the reason, and found a russet pelt nestled alongside the dark pelt he had woken up on.

Derek was awake and watching him.

Stiles scowled at the other Wolf and snatched his pelt up from the bed. He wrapped it around his shoulders as he had seen the other Wolves do, and that's when he noticed the markings on his arms.

Faint, red lines twisted up from his hands, spiraling to disappear just below his shoulders. The lines were delicate and elegant, yet they reminded Stiles of fire in their shape. He touched his hands to his forearms to see if the skin there was tender -- perhaps Derek had marked him in his sleep? The other Wolves did not have markings like this. But his skin felt normal and did not hurt to touch.

"Your magic," Derek told him, nodding at his arms. His ruby eyes were slits. "Now you can use your magic."

"Magic," Stiles murmured to himself.

He held his hand out, palm up, and imagined a great wave of heat pulsing out before him.

Derek went flying, spinning up until he hit the cave wall with a thud. He landed hard on the other side of his bed, gasping for air.

"Magic," Stiles mused, pleased. He adjusted his pelt around his shoulders and turned to leave.

"Stiles." Derek sounded pathetic, coughing as he struggled to regain his breath.

Stiles kept walking, trying to remember the way out of the caverns. Derek's cave was deep in the network, but Stiles's newly improved hearing guided him up and out of the deep caverns and back to the sleeping cave. Lydia was waiting there for him anxiously, standing up suddenly when she saw him approaching.

Stiles glowered at her.

"You didn't tell me!" Stiles said, and it came out on more of a growl than his normal human voice. He glared at her and flexed his hand at his side, considering pulsing her into a wall too.

Lydia went suddenly red in the face, her whole body tensing.

"You," Lydia ran up to him and smacked his shoulder, “left!” 

Stiles recoiled in surprise, but the hit didn't hurt much, actually.

"I," hit, "told," hit, "you," hit, "never," hit, " _leave!_ "

"No, you did not!" Stiles countered, rubbing at his shoulder which was starting to turn red like Lydia's face.

She gaped at him before rearing back.

"First day here!" Lydia screeched, 'If leave, get eaten!' Lydia said!"

"Animals!" Stiles shouted back. "Which -- yes, I knew that! Everyone knows that!"

Lydia went even redder.

"Fae!" Lydia hissed at him stalking up until she was nose to nose with him, glaring. "Eagles. Deer. Buffalo. Lions. _Fae_ eat Stiles! Fae feel Stiles’s magic when Stiles is not with pack!"

"You didn't tell me about Derek," Stiles said haltingly, embarrassment flooding his cheeks. "You didn't tell me about that."

"Too fast. Needed more time." Lydia looked taken aback. "Stiles needed more time. Eagles made big problem. Lydia wanted for Stiles to feel like pack. Derek didn't want --"

" _I know_ Derek didn't want me," Stiles told her coolly, feeling stung by that fact and trying not to care. "I figured that out. I know."

"Derek protect Stiles," Lydia pointed out, looking flustered and confused. "Derek protect pack because of Eagles. But Derek like Stiles. Derek keep Stiles in pack. Derek could kill, or give to Eagles. Only way to keep Stiles."

"You didn't tell me," Stiles growled at her. He flexed his hand at his side before bringing it up and sending out a pulse of power. Lydia gasped when it hit her and sent her flying backward, skidding on the ground as she changed into her wolf skin to catch herself. "Now I'm _angry_."

"Magic," Lydia gasped, her eyes wide as she took in the changes on his arms for the first time. "Spark magic."

Stiles's hands tingled with heat. He felt powerful. He stalked past her, ignoring her, too, when she called after him. He felt her follow him, felt the eyes on him as he walked through the sleeping cave. The other Wolves had seen him throw Lydia, and they were wary of him now, scuttling out of his way to give him a clear path to the outside of the cave.

With the enormous power in his body, Stiles didn't see what kind of limitations he should place on himself. He wanted away -- away from the wolves, away from Lydia, away from Derek. He wanted out. He wanted to breathe, to feel untouchable.

He stopped at the mouth of the cave. It was like stepping out of a wall of heat and into the cold -- a sensation less physical and more emotional, like his attachment to his pelt. The feeling disoriented him, and it took him a moment to figure out what it was: the magic of the pack. It hovered like a cloud around him, and as he left the cave he left it behind too.

Like he imagined cooling the touches on his skin, Stiles imagined his pelt merging with his skin. He felt the other skin slide over his human skin in an instant. Stiles fell to four legs and jumped joyfully in the air, reveling in the new clarity of scent and hearing this skin offered him.

He had not slept long -- the sun was high in the sky outside of the cave, tilting toward the horizon but not yet descending to it. Stiles trotted through the forest and enjoyed learning his new body and powers. He grew flowers around his paws as he walked, directing the growth of the plant with his thoughts and grinning at the rush of power.

Lydia followed behind him, far enough that Stiles couldn't reach her with his magic when he tried, but not so far that Stiles wasn't perfectly aware she was there. After a few minutes, Derek joined her. Stiles grew annoyed with both of them and their hovering.

Just as he was about to turn and chase them off for good, a shriek pierced the air above him. With a thought, he shifted back to his human skin and stared at the canopy, his fingertips crackling with heat at his sides. The trees began to rustle, shrieks and screams filling the air as a horde of Eagles landed abruptly, their enormous talons shaking the trees and their golden eyes staring down at him unblinkingly. 

"Just try," Stiles murmured, gathering his focus as the flock above him stared at him in eerie silence. "I will make you regret it."

Lydia and Derek were running toward him, drawing closer by the second.

Stiles didn't need saving anymore, though.

He was no weak human.

Stiles raised his hands to the heavens and charged the skies with energy, darkening the sunlight in an instant. Rain pelted down in the next breath, and in the next Stiles thought of bright, flashing daggers, piercing the sky and striking the Eagles and their hungry eyes.

Chaos ensued. The Eagles squawked and cried out as lightning flashed through the trees, upsetting them from their perches. Two fell from the trees, thudding to the ground around him and crying out in pain. Several swooped down from the trees and charged at him, so Stiles knocked them from their path with pulses of energy. More dove for him, their talons out and their beaks curved in a deadly shape as they screamed. Stiles realized belatedly that he only had two hands to direct his lightning and he was outnumbered twenty to one.

He was growing rapidly colder, too, and it wasn't just the feeling of the slicing rain.

With a desperate scream, Stiles threw energy from his body in all directions, shattering the flights of almost a dozen Eagles diving for him. All the heat left his body at once and he fell to the ground, closing his eyes to an icy nothingness.

When next he was able to open them, he was back in the flickering darkness of the caves, a familiar shape and smell next to him. Lydia sat with her back turned to him, her shoulders shaking. The cave walls amplified the sound of quiet sobbing. Scott was there too he realized, hunched next to Lydia and sniffling. 

Even though he was nestled under a pile of snimal pelts, he was freezing.

Stiles closed his eyes again, exhaustion pulling him back down.

He woke next to the smell of food by his mouth. Lydia held out a broth to him, her eyes red and angry as she spooned it into his mouth. She was rough with him, abrupt and jerky as she fed him spoonful by spoonful. He didn't think she was suited to be a healer.

Stiles could barely move his body. He couldn't sit up, couldn't even turn his head. He was helpless again.

"Magic is not free," Lydia told him, her voice shaky and forcibly quiet as she stirred the soup in her hands. "Never free."

"What..." Stiles wondered, but his mouth refused to work properly.

"Life is magic." Lydia turned to him, feeding him more soup. "Stiles has more than most, but not god. Stiles almost enter long sleep again. Too cold. Frostbite. Lydia thought... Stiles alive, but..." 

"Why?" Stiles asked. Swallowing was painful.

Lydia poured water into his mouth carefully. She watched to make sure he swallowed it all down before she answered him.

"Stiles _made storm out of nothing_. Big magic. Stiles is too small. Not enough life in Stiles."

"I hate Eagles," Stiles told her, closing his eyes. "They look at me like they want to eat me."

"They _do._ If Eagles eat Stiles, take some of Stiles's magic," Lydia said softly. Stiles opened his eyes, shocked. "Told you -- _Fae will eat you_. Cannot mate you now, can only eat. Stiles should be happy still alive. Need pack’s protection, even as Wolf. Eagles wanted to steal and mate Stiles before. Now just eat if they find Stiles by himself again."

Stiles swallowed another spoonful.

"Mate," Stiles whispered.

Lydia paused.

"Yes."

"Derek said 'mate'." Stiles closed his eyes. Everything was cold and painful. Stiles wanted to sleep again, but Lydia kept feeding him. When he tried to refuse, she made a sound of impatience and pried his mouth open with the spoon. Stiles swallowed reluctantly before speaking again. "Derek. Stiles. Together."

"Yes," Lydia said softly, carefully.

"Mate is... coupling."

"No," Lydia shook her head. "More. Much more."

"Marriage?" Stiles asked, his stomach squirming uncomfortably at the thought.

Lydia hesitated, thinking about it before shaking her head.

"Hard to explain to humans. Mate is for Wolves."

"Does Derek have many mates?" Stiles asked haphazardly. He didn't want to care about the answer. “Who are they?”

"No." Lydia's voice was iron. "Just Stiles."

Stiles digested that with profound surprise. Rather than think about it, he changed the subject.

"Other Fae... mate?"

"Not... not same. Wolves only. Different for different Fae. "

"Derek..." Stiles closed his eyes. "Hurt Stiles."

"Didn't mean to," Lydia's words were quiet. "Derek told Lydia. Didn't know how to change Stiles any other way. Didn't know how to explain. Tried to make Stiles feel good, then be fast and done. Tried not to hurt Stiles, but still hurt Stiles."

Stiles's insides lurched and then settled.

"Should I forgive him?" he asked, already knowing her answer.

Lydia bristled, her movements going stiff.

"Don't know. Don't care. Stiles do what he wants, seems like. But no leave again," Lydia told him sternly, forcing another spoonful into his mouth. "Scared Lydia. Scared Derek. Derek hurt now. Eagles tried to _eat_ Stiles. Lydia hurt, too. Scott sad. You understand? You listen to Lydia now?"

"Yes," Stiles whispered miserably. He felt worse than when he was human -- utterly weak, completely broken down. But this time he had done it to himself — and others.

He faded in and out of consciousness for he didn't know how long. It seemed like forever. His body slowly recovered and he regained control of his hands after Lydia had fed him a handful of times, which was a relief because she was not gentle or good at the service. Scott came to visit him when he was awake, curling up next to him and babbling at him in Lycan. Since they could no longer roughhouse and play, Scott tried to teach Stiles new words. He soon got bored with regular words and taught Stiles dirty words instead — Lycan curse words and coupling methods. Stiles laughed whenever Scott would animatedly act them out for him. Stiles enjoyed the warmth of the other Wolf and enjoyed the fact that he was growing better at understanding and conversing with him.

Derek came later. He looked pale and sick as he sat down next to Stiles. He laid a bundle of bright orange herbs tied with a leather cord by Stiles's bed.

"Derek hurt," Stiles pointed out quietly, taking in the terrible color of the Wolf's human skin.

Derek nodded.

"If Fae hurt us, we heal for long time," Derek said in Lycan haltingly, slowly. Derek lifted his tunic and showed Stiles a gash in his side in the shape of raking talons. It was pink and shiny with scar tissue. Stiles had never seen the Wolves scar before. "Still heal, but slowly."

"Eagles dead?" Stiles growled.

Derek nodded.

"Stiles killed many. Stiles is strong Wolf."

Stiles stared at the bundle of herbs, his mind working backwards. He had received bundles of herbs like this before when he hurt himself, too, but he assumed they were from Scott or Isaac. They had helped him to feel better then. He hoped these herbs would help him, too.

"I know this," Stiles said, not sure how to explain what he was thinking to the Wolf. 

"If Stiles becomes sick, I bring this. Different each time. Stiles is sick a lot," Derek told him softly. His red eyes glimmered in the dark.

The way the herbs were tied was the same. Careful, meticulous — with obvious care.

"Derek tricked Stiles," Stiles said slowly, his anger sparking in him again. But it was less now, more an ember than a flame.

Derek looked down at his hands, his whole body heaving on a slow sigh. He got up to leave and his shoulders slumped under their dark pelt.

Stiles watched him go. He had hated how the Wolf pinned him down, but if what Lydia told him was true then Derek had been trying to save him from a worse fate -- death, or whatever the Eagles would have done to him. Stiles had no doubt the Eagles would have treated him much worse. The way they looked at him Stiles knew they were the source of the stories the villagers whispered about the Fae. 

And Derek had had the opportunity to take Stiles roughly and painfully. Stiles had enjoyed most of the coupling, until the Wolf held him down and entered him without warning. Every action up to that point had been about making Stiles feel pleasure... Stiles thought now that the Wolf had tried to make it quick and efficient, to hurt him as little as he could. But that moment of helplessness had angered Stiles more than if Derek had taken him painfully and slowly. If the Wolf had only tried to explain... but maybe not. They barely understood each other. And Derek had tried to explain many things to him that Stiles didn't understand, maybe that was one of them.

Stiles closed his eyes and slept, unable to answer the questions in his mind.

Lydia made Stiles a hot drink from the herbs that Derek left. It stung his throat as he swallowed it, but it filled Stiles with warmth almost instantly. It faded until Stiles was cold again, but it felt nice when Stiles drank it.

Derek didn't come to visit Stiles again.


	3. Chapter 3

As he progressively gained control of his limbs and the ability to walk, Stiles noticed that the pack was treating him differently. Where before they had touched him and joked with him — and teased him on occasion — now they were skittish and wary of him. Scott told him that they had all heard what he did to the Eagles and they were frightened of him.

Worse than that, perhaps, was the fact that Derek had almost died with him while fighting off the Eagles. Most in the pack thought Stiles foolish for running off as soon as he discovered his powers, even when the Alpha warned him not to. They were not happy their Alpha had almost died rescuing him. But Scott also whispered to Stiles that the pack, while fearful, were impressed with the number of Eagles he killed on his own before Lydia and Derek showed up and escaped with him to the caves.

Stiles should have felt more lonely given the Wolves' new attitude toward him, but he actually felt more like himself now that his Lycan had hit an upswing in improvement and he was able to communicate more easily. His father had always praised (or admonished) him for his clever mouth, and being unable to tell proper jokes or explain his thoughts had truly drained him. So much of who he was was what he said and how he said it.

Even Lydia seemed impressed with his progress in learning Lycan. He studied every day he was sick in bed — repeating Lycan phrases over and over until they fell off his tongue quickly, talking with Scott for hours, reciting Lycan words Lydia had taught him before he slept at night. Before, he had studied for survival and because Lydia made him, but now he studied because it allowed him to feel like himself. And now that he understood a Wolf's mouth and the shapes that it could make, even his accent had improved.

His magic returned with his strength. The way Lydia explained it to him, Stiles had a reserve of unused magic that he built up as a human, and which he had used all at once. Now he had to build up that reserve again. Lydia told him that as a Spark this process would be quicker, and he would end up with more magic in his reserve than most Wolves. But it would still take time, more time than his body needed to heal.

Stiles was a little afraid to do magic again, anyway. Sometimes he would grow little flowers in the air just for his own amusement when he was terribly bored and bed-ridden, but most of the time he shied away from trying anything bigger for fear of relapsing back into the frostbite state. Deaton, who tended to him when Lydia didn't, had told him that most Wolves didn't survive frostbite — once they lost that much of their lifeforce they rarely recovered. But Stiles generated new magic quickly enough that he had lived, miraculously, and seemed to be recovering without any permanent damage.

Afraid of overusing his slowly replenishing magic, Stiles reveled instead in his new skin. After a month of bed rest, he ran in his wolf skin with the pack on every hunt. He would roughhouse with Scott the way the other Wolves played — without restraint, joyful and fierce. He loved to roam the woods with the pack and just smell the air, hear the animals sleeping in their burrows, and feel the wildness around him and know he was part of it now. He was a predator; no longer prey. The woods were _his_ woods. The pack was _his_ pack.

There were certainly downsides to his expanded senses, however.

One night, Stiles was walking down to visit Scott in his cave when he heard noises. He realized what they were almost immediately and felt himself freeze, unbidden images of red eyes and a powerful body surfacing in his mind. Stiles found himself listening for a few moments, lost in his own memories, before his face heated up and he left hurriedly. Scott was obviously busy.

He hadn't tried to talk to Lydia about the day he was changed again. But he brought it up with her at their next lesson while she was teaching him new vocabulary.

"A pet is another creature that Fae keep for fun. Humans have dogs sometimes, it is like that. Wolves don't keep pets, but other Fae do. Sometimes other Fae keep their skin brethren — like the wolves are for us — but some Fae think of humans as pets. These are nasty Fae, Snakes and Wolverines and Eagles. They steal humans for their own amusement. We don't like them, we often fight with them."

Stiles considered this new word carefully, his mind stuck replaying images that had plagued him since that crude reminder the day before.

"So, I am Derek's sex pet."

Lydia stared at him.

"Mate," she said faintly, her cheeks going red with embarrassment. " _Mate_. Not pet." She swore softly in Lycan, shaking her head. 

"Derek doesn't want to couple with me anymore," Stiles told her. "How can I be 'mate' if he doesn't talk to me? I am just a Wolf pet."

"Stiles doesn't talk to him. Stiles threw him against a wall," Lydia pointed out, her voice chilly. "Stiles is pack now. No longer human. Cannot be a pet."

Stiles thought about that. He hadn't actively avoided the Wolf during his recovery, but he hadn't sought him out, either. He saw that Derek had healed — he saw the Wolf almost every day, so his recovery was evident. But Derek didn't seem to watch him anymore, not like before. Without the Wolf's eyes on him constantly, he had almost forgotten about him until he eavesdropped on Scott and Kira.

Stiles finished his lesson, whizzing through his new vocabulary words with ease before he left Lydia's cave and walked down the cave network on a path he had only taken once before. When he shifted to his wolf skin, he could hear other Wolves in their caves sleeping, talking, playing, arguing, and even coupling. He ignored these sounds and focused on the pathway until he came to the cavern he sought.

Derek was rolling around the wide floor of his cavern, fighting with another wolf, Boyd. They were locked in a human tangle that quickly morphed into a wolf scuffle and back into a human wrestling match with alarming speed. Stiles watched for a moment at the entrance to the cavern before Derek noticed him and pushed Boyd off, signalling an end to the match with a low Lycan word that was almost indistinguishable from a growl.

Boyd looked between them, panting and sweating, before he quickly gathered his tunic and left the cave without another word.

"So that's why blood is on your floor," Stiles mused, watching a pair of scratches heal rapidly on Derek's bare chest. Derek rubbed a hand faintly over the closing wounds, his eyes glued to Stiles.

Stiles's gaze traveled over to the bed in the corner before he pulled his attention away and back to Derek.

"Stiles need something?" Derek asked quietly, eerily still.

"Lydia still calls me ‘Derek's mate’. Derek called me ‘mate’." Stiles looked around the cave, feeling fidgety and looking for something to do. He saw the pitcher of wine on Derek's shelf and helped himself to a glass as he spoke. The sweet wine calmed some of his nerves and it gave rise to more flashing, buried memories of the other Wolf. They were mostly pleasant. "Teach me what 'mate' means. Lydia's tongue is barbed when she teaches."

Derek didn't relax as Stiles turned to lean against the cave wall, studying him with his wine in hand. But Stiles felt more relaxed around the Wolf than the last time he was here. They were on nearly equal footing now — whatever Stiles lacked in strength and skill, he made up for in cunning and magic. 

Derek crossed his arms over his chest, silent as he pondered Stiles's request.

"Your Lycan is much better."

"I learn quickly." Stiles smiled at him. It felt different to smile with a Wolf's skin on his back. Sometimes it was more of a leer now with the predator inside of him.

"Stiles is a survivor," Derek started, considering him quietly. "Strong human. Survived the fire that killed his pack. Strong Wolf. Survived frostbite."

"So?" Stiles asked calmly, drinking from his goblet.

"I like strength." Derek's eyes flashed ruby.

"So you decided I am your mate because you wanted my magic.” Stiles had suspected as much. “You don’t know me. You are not my friend. You don't even try to be.”

Derek shifted, looking annoyed now. A dark cloud settled over him as he replied. 

“When you first came, you were... very sad. You lost your pack and almost died. I told Lydia to care for you and teach you Lycan. I told Scott to make you feel happier. I protected you when you were hurt. I ordered the Wolves to never use your magic. Twice I carried you out of the woods and back to the safety of our caverns.” Derek glanced at him, some of his annoyance disappearing. “But... it was you who learned Lycan. You befriended Scott. You ran on our hunts, even when you thought you couldn’t. You let our children take your magic for their own amusement. And you killed the Eagles who would have killed many of us.”

”I had to.”

”Stiles is strong — inside and outside.” Derek’s mouth twisted into something like a smile. “I like strength.”

”You never talk to me,” Stiles pointed out, feeling hot.

”Couldn’t.” Derek arched an eyebrow. “But we are talking now.”

”What is a mate?” Stiles asked again, pouring himself more wine.

”Trust,” Derek said simply.

”I don’t trust you. You hurt me.”

Derek stared at him, frustration brewing in his expression. After a long moment, he moved to the bed and started unwrapping his pelt from his shoulders. Stiles watched incredulously as he laid it down on the bed and began unlacing his pants.

”I will burn you,” Stiles warned him mildly, drinking more wine.

”You are afraid of this. You are afraid of coupling this way. You are afraid of so little... I do not understand why this. I will show you it is not to be feared. Doesn’t hurt when there is trust — only pleasure. But you don’t trust me.”

”This isn’t helping trust.” Stiles nodded at the naked Wolf in front of him.

”You will take me the way you feared. I will show you it is not for hurting, only for pleasure.”

Stiles stared as the Wolf laid down belly-up and parted his legs, sliding one knee up to display his backside. He looked back at Stiles over his shoulder.

Stiles had not expected anything like this when he came looking for the Wolf. He had steeled himself to reject the Wolf once and for all. He had expected the Wolf to rage at him, or tell him he would pick a different mate since Stiles was so uncooperative. But the Wolf seemed calm, pleased even, as he invited Stiles to penetrate him. Like this was a genius solution to their little trust problem.

”I will not do...” Stiles swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He felt hot. The sight of the naked wolf, his legs parted and enticing, was arousing emotions Stiles didn’t want and physical reactions he didn’t anticipate.

Derek waited, drawing the bottle he had used before from his bed and drizzling oil down between his strong thighs and buttocks.

”I trust you,” Derek told him softly, rubbing the oil into himself and watching Stiles closely. 

“I—“ Stiles’s Lycan left him. Sweat started everywhere on his body. He couldn’t draw his eyes from the Wolf’s backside, which was now glistening with oil. He remembered how pleasant the last time with him had been... before the Wolf held him down.

The Wolf's oiled curves were the most arousing sight he had ever laid eyes on. His body yearned to cross the distance between them.

"This isn't fair," Stiles said suddenly, tripping over his Lycan and repeating the phrase until he had the tense correct. Derek stared at him like he hadn't understood, but Stiles pressed on. He pushed through the Lycan until it came out right, frustration and lust burning in his voice. "You know I've... I have never been with a woman. And now you do this. Is this magic? Is that why I feel like this?"

"Magic?" Derek seemed to find that idea funny. "What kind of magic?"

"Magic to make me... feel," Stiles struggled to explain exactly what he meant. Deaton had been teaching him about magic, but he had never mentioned magic like this. Most Wolf magic had to do with natural processes — growing, creating, shaping. It stood to reason that Derek could create feelings in him. At that thought, he finally succeeded in looking away from the Wolf, gluing his eyes instead to the dark walls of the cavern.

"Feel..." Derek trailed off, sitting up on the bed. Stiles breathed a sigh of relief and returned his gaze to him only to find the impressive erection straining between his thighs was equally attention-drawing. Stiles cursed to himself in English and looked at the floor instead, his whole face hot.

"Feel... attraction. Like for a woman. Is this Wolf magic?"

"For a woman?" Derek chuckled, and Stiles heard him adjust himself on the bed again. He didn't dare look up this time. "Why not for a man? Humans are so... strange. There is no reason to use magic on you."

Stiles stared at his feet, wondering at the Wolf's words. He had never been with a woman, but he didn't think it could feel any better than being with Derek. Derek's lips worked just as well as a woman's. His hands were just as good, if not stronger than a woman — which Stiles remembered appreciating.

His —

"Stop. I will not. You are using magic on me. You must be." Stiles's body was a furnace, his insides a tornado.

"Why are you so afraid?"

"You tricked me!" Stiles snarled in Lycan, glaring at him. Derek was lying back on the furs now, his legs splayed out without care, and Stiles could easily see the most enticing parts of him. It infuriated him more. "You are tricking me again."

" _You_ are tricking _me_ ," Derek growled, soft but with surprising feeling. "You say you don't want me. But you are still here."

Stiles shivered all over and wrapped his arms around himself. He wasn't cold.

He was hot.

"Your magic has returned to you."

"You did this." Stiles could feel the heat pulsing under his skin, just like before he drained his magic fighting the Eagles.

"I have no control over your magic." Derek looked very pleased about that. Stiles didn't want to think about what it meant that his feelings for the other Wolf had accelerated his internal healing process to such an extent.

"Well," Stiles snapped and then stopped. He didn't have any explanations other than the obvious one. He swore again in English and tried to avert his gaze from the naked skin of the alpha.

"I will help you cool it," Derek offered slowly, stretching back on the furs and making plenty of room for Stiles on the bed, "when you mount me. And then we will sleep here, with our pelts together."

"Why with our pelts together?" Stiles asked suspiciously. He remembered Derek insisting he sleep on his pelt when he was turned into a wolf. More Wolf magic, perhaps?

"Our wolves will be close, like our human skins. It will be enjoyable." Derek chuckled. "Don't humans do anything just for pleasure?"

Stiles swallowed, his throat too dry at the thought of it. He knew nestling his wolf skin with Derek's would feel good in some strange, primal way. And he had no doubt he would enjoy the coupling.

He could always burn him if the Wolf tried to trick him again. Or, better yet, throw him away with a burst of power.

Tentatively, Stiles edged toward the bed of furs. Derek's eyes gleamed and he went still in anticipation.

Stiles sat down hesitantly, feeling ashamed as he let his lust control him. His eyes were drawn again to the Wolf's backside, the generous curves of which he could see clearly. Derek rolled over onto his stomach again to give him an unfettered view, pillowing his head with his forearms and seeming far too relaxed.

Stiles shifted over the Wolf in one movement, giving in all at once to his carnal desires to put the Wolf underneath him. He grabbed roughly at the Wolf's hips, hoisting them higher and moving Derek's knees out, nudging his way between the strong thighs.

Derek groaned in delight as Stiles pulled his erection from his pants to rub it against the Wolf's oiled skin. He slicked himself up on the Wolf's skin, covering his flesh with oil from the Wolf’s ministrations. After a heart-stopping moment, however, the Wolf hissed and pulled away. Stiles watched in fascination as color bloomed where their skin had touched, marring the perfect backside of the Wolf. It was mild — a pink rash that spread where Stiles had touched him — but it looked painful.

The Wolf's eyes shone as he looked back at Stiles over his shoulder.

"Sorry," Stiles said quickly, dismayed that he hadn't even realized he was burning the Wolf.

"No," the Wolf said breathlessly. "Magic. It's—" and he said something Stiles didn't know. At Stiles's blank stare, the Wolf's cheeks pinked and he dropped his gaze, hunching his shoulders. "It's good. I thought you hated me."

"I didn't know I was burning you..." Stiles apologized softly, willing his touch to cool as he tentatively touched the Wolf again.

"Not burning," Derek hissed at the touch, his back going rigid. "Pleasure. Good. Just... so much."

"Oh," Stiles breathed, watching the skin under his hands bloom with red and prickle with gooseflesh.

"When you are inside me..." Derek trailed off with a shiver. Stiles swallowed at the sight of the Wolf's powerful shoulders shuddering like that. "It will be..."

"I won't burn you," Stiles said with certainty, resolving to himself that he would not loose control. It would be unforgivable if he violated the Wolf like that.

"No." Derek settled back, shifting to put himself on display for Stiles's hungry eyes. "You won't."

As Stiles was preparing to enter the Wolf, however, Derek went rigid again and looked back over his shoulder at Stiles.

"Take off your pelt — you cannot change while we mate."

"I—“ Stiles hadn't even thought of it. But maybe if his control was too weak...

"Next to mine," Derek insisted, taking the pelt Stiles reluctantly offered him and smoothing it along his own. His hand seemed to linger on it, admiring the russet fur between his fingers before he assumed his previous position.

As Derek laid Stiles's pelt down next to his own, Stiles felt something tug at him in his chest, a strange, warm feeling. Contentment. Peace. It radiated through him and soothed some of the anxiety he still felt about going through with this.

Light headed and steaming with heat, Stiles sunk into the Wolf in one slow movement. Derek shuddered and groaned under him, going instantly weak. Stiles caught the Wolf's chest when he saw his arms shake suddenly, worried he might collapse. He tried to withdraw, but Derek grabbed him and kept him from moving away.

"I am hurting you. I knew it," Stiles moaned, struggling against the Wolf's tight grip and with his own feelings of pleasure.

"No." Derek's eyes were glowing now, his breaths too quick. "You are _giving_ me your magic. Not pain."

"Not... pain."

"Good." But Derek didn't look it. His skin had broken out in a sweat and his eyes were heavily lidded. His breathing was labored, and it grew more so the longer Stiles stayed inside him, even without moving. "Too good."

Stiles didn't know what to make of that. But he hoped the Wolf would be honest with him, as he only had so much self restraint.

At first he was careful and delicate, watching the way Derek seemed to be slowly hyperventilating under him. He glistened with sweat and closed his eyes under Stiles's attentions. Then Derek began to moan and sigh with every good stroke. Stiles loved the husky sound of the alpha moaning. It was an unmistakable sign of pleasure, and Stiles felt powerful to be the cause of it. So Stiles angled his hips the way that Derek liked and pressed deeper and harder into the Wolf, reveling in how he sank so effortlessly into the tight, hot channel of the Wolf's body.

Before Stiles had even worked himself up, Derek was spilling underneath him, locking up and crying out in half a wolf howl and half the strangled yell of a man. Stiles hushed him, suddenly very conscious of how many other Wolves may be able to hear them like this. He stroked a hand down Derek's chest and felt over his stomach where the Wolf's release was thick and wet. 

Derek swore softly in Lycan as Stiles lowered him down onto their pelts to give him time to rest after his sudden release.

"Stiles is..." Derek panted, closing his eyes and leaning back into Stiles's touch. "Very good at this. Too good."

"You really enjoyed that.” Stiles could barely believe it, but the Wolf’s body didn’t lie. He had not even stroked himself before he spilled.

“I will be ready again soon,” Derek told him, nuzzling into their collective pelts and wrapping Stiles’s arms around his chest. Stiles held the Wolf the way he wanted, but he felt guilty about enjoying the touch so much. He had tried to hate him, yet here was, taking whatever the Wolf offered him.

His throat grew tight as he realized this was the least lonely and sad he had felt in months. The broken parts of him didn’t hurt as much when Derek was so adamant about his affections for him. Stiles was starting to believe in them. 

Derek held Stiles's arms firmly around him like he was afraid of Stiles letting go. Stiles pressed himself tight against the back of the Wolf, warming his skin where sweat had cooled it. The Wolf purred with delight and Stiles felt even stranger. 

Keeping his hips still when he was buried in the Wolf was a testament to his willpower. As Derek’s breathing slowed and his skin color faded from the trails of rosy pink gooseflesh, Stiles tried not to jostle him, but he could feel every breath squeeze him just a little. Every tiny movement rubbed the Wolf’s curves against him, reminding him of how attractive Stiles found him.

Before long the Wolf was pressing back into his unintentional jerks and thrusts, circling his hips and squeezing Stiles in a teasing sort of way. Stiles growled in the Wolf's ear, a warning. Derek responded by pushing back with intent, so Stiles rolled over him, pressing the wolf into the furs of the bed with a sharp thrust of his hips. The Wolf opened easily for him now, his body relaxed after his release. He groaned encouragement to Stiles, too, and when he turned his head his eyes were glowing and his mouth was slack with rapture.

Through the harsh climb of their coupling, Derek reached back and grabbed Stiles's hand. A blinding flash of pleasure circuited through him, catching Stiles off guard. He thrust wildly and Derek cried out as their pleasure spiked together.

"What—" Stiles gasped as his vision returned to him.

"Your magic. I will give it back," Derek panted, sending another pulse of overwhelming pleasure through him.

Stiles bucked into the Wolf, sinking deep as waves of pleasure built and radiated out from the Wolf's skin. In mere seconds he was releasing, clutching the Derek tightly to him as though he would fall away without his support. He felt the Wolf's own release paint his skin as they tumbled down to the furs together, wrapped up in each other.

Derek seemed to be purring when Stiles opened his eyes again, warm rumbles of pleasure at odds with his frightening red eyes. Stiles almost laughed at the strange reaction.

“Not so scary,” Derek whispered to him, smiling. “Right?”

”That was different from last time,” Stiles reminded him. “Will it always feel like that?”

”With me, I hope so.” Derek sighed wistfully. “If you couple with another, I cannot tell you. Magic is strange and unpredictable. It depends how you feel.”

”I feel...” Stiles thought hard to sort through his conflicting emotions. “Can I couple with others?”

Derek’s expression shuttered and he looked away before he answered.

”Yes.”

”Lydia said I was not allowed.”

Derek was quiet at that. His big shoulders heaved with a sigh and he shifted on the bed restlessly.

"She made a mistake.”

Stiles contemplated his bed partner’s dramatic change in demeanor. Derek was obviously bothered by the idea of him with someone else, but Stiles didn't know the extent of his feelings on the matter. He had learned not to assume Wolves were anything like humans in their customs.

”Mate. You did not teach me what it means.”

Derek shuddered, looking back at him. His ruby eyes were shadowed with tension and longing.

”I tried.”

Stiles swallowed hard. A chasm widened between them, and Derek felt like he was much farther away than an arm's length. Stiles wasn't sure if he reached out to touch him that he would actually feel him under his fingers.

"I—" Stiles sat up, gathering his pelt from under them. Derek rolled away and sat up too, his eyes wide with confusion. "I need to go."

Stiles dressed self-consciously under the attention of the Wolf. Before he could give in to the temptation to stay, he left.

 

* * *

 

Stiles slept poorly that night, tossing and turning until Lydia kicked him in the shin and shushed him with a sleep-worn voice. Stiles stared at the cave ceiling and thought about Derek, and the Wolves, and magic. He thought about his father and his village. He thought about what it had meant to be a human, compared to his new life as a Wolf. He couldn't reconcile the two worlds.

As a human, he had never thought about his way of looking at things as a "human" perspective. It was the _only_ perspective. It was just perspective. Now that he had been forced to see from the eyes of a Wolf, he could recognize the flaws and strengths of his own culture and his own traditions. They felt less like "his" and more like that of the person he had been before: the stable boy who loved his father, talked too much, and didn't have any luck with the village girls.

Now... he gazed at the faint outline of the new markings on his arms, sending a pulse of heat through them with a thought. They glowed with a faint red light as he conjured embers in the air that popped and fizzled before they wilted into black ash. Lydia mumbled in her sleep, her feet tangling with his as she moved closer to the heat of his magic.

He was not that person anymore.

Perhaps he should not cling to that person's perspective, either.

But what of his human ways should he take with him, and what should he leave behind? He could not think of a good reason the humans had limited coupling to a man and a woman. It seemed harmless enough to let that belief go and widen his options. He clearly found pleasure in the arms of a man, and he could not think of any ways it harmed him to seek that pleasure again.

But... that didn't mean he was prepared for what was waiting for him if he did.

The Wolves seemed incapable of putting into words what the relationship of mates was, but he had figured out it was something important. Derek expected him to couple with him exclusively if they were to continue to be mates, and likely in other intimate ways, much as man and wife would have back in his village.

Stiles sat up and carefully disentangled himself from the clutches of Lydia, Kira, and Scott. He shifted to a wolf and padded quietly through the pack until he came upon Derek, sleeping side by side with Erica, Boyd, and Isaac. 

Stiles whined softly in a Lycan plea. Isaac's eyes opened and he blinked at him. Stiles crept forward and nudged at Derek's nose with his own. The great, black wolf didn't stir. Boyd was stretching in his sleep, though, transforming briefly into his human skin before curling back into his wolf skin.

"What is it?" Isaac growled at him in Lycan.

Stiles nudged Derek again, ignoring Isaac's irritated gaze. Derek growled in response this time, moving away from him. Stiles whined, an unintelligible sound of frustration.

Isaac took pity on him and pinched the black wolf on the side.

Derek sat up immediately, his lips pulled back in a snarl and his hackles rising.

"Get rid of him," Isaac begged, cowed by the red-eyed Wolf's tired anger.

When Derek saw Stiles, his expression cooled instantly. His ears flattened slightly against his head as he stood and picked his way around his sleeping mates and over to Stiles's side.

Stiles nudged him with his nose in greeting. The other wolf leaned into it, nuzzling him back and nipping gently at the back of his neck, behind his ears. Stiles closed his eyes to enjoy the feel of the other wolf before he padded away from him and toward the entrance to the cavern. Derek followed him quietly, just behind him. 

Stiles stopped at the edge of the cavern and looked out at the forest.

"Will you come with me?" he asked him in Lycan. "I can't go alone."

Derek tilted his head, silent.

Stiles could smell it, miles off. He hadn't been back since the Wolves had taken him in. Hadn't wanted to. But now he felt the pull of it, the pull of his old identity, and he couldn't rest without seeing it again.

Derek followed him when he set off at a lope, the ground passing under his feet like a rushing river. He breathed in the spaces between the pounding of his legs against the cold earth. His path forward was more of a patchwork of smells and sounds than a visual map. The night air was cool and dangerous, but with the dark wolf behind him he didn't feel afraid.

It took less time than he expected. The Wolf caves had been so close all this time, but Stiles had never left the village, not even once. He listened too well to the stories of the forest and the Fae who ruled them. He never put so much as a toe behind the forest line. Same with the lake nearby, the legends of giant fish who dragged swimming men down into the depths enough to keep him from trying to swim in the water. Some had said the creatures took them away to couple with them, breeding strange, distorted fish that sometimes floated up on the shores of the lake. He had never known a man or woman who disappeared this way, but he had believed those tales without question. They were fact, not fiction.

He questioned everything now, even the myths that had turned out to be true.

Derek slowed to a stop when they came upon the horrific ruins of his village, but Stiles didn't slow until he had reached the charcoal crumbles that used to be his home. He shifted to his human skin to avoid the sad smells that his wolf skin could detect. He sat down on the ground hard and coughed when black dust plumed up and enveloped him.

Derek was next to him soon, padding through the village as if he was uncertain he should be there. He slid into his human skin too when he came upon Stiles, sitting more carefully than Stiles had among the burnt remains of the house.

"Many entered the long sleep here," Derek said softly, his red eyes glowing. "Can you feel them?"

"The dead," Stiles replied in English. Derek nodded, quiet and tense. Stiles reached with his magic until he came upon the traces of life force that had sunk into the ground. He gasped at the feel of them, brushing familiar sensations as he touched the different pools of magic with his own magic. Here was the butcher. Here the girl he had tried unsuccessfully to kiss only a year before. Here the old grandmother who taught him to count when he was just a child.

Shuddering, he channeled his magic intentionally to the small plot of land behind his home. He sank to the ground in reverence as he felt the comforting pool of life force there, aching with a dual sense of joy and longing as he twisted himself in the essence and tried to memorize the feel of it.

Derek stroked down his back as Stiles curled over the ground, pressing himself down in the dirt with desperation. A sob seized him, followed by an uncontrollable cry. Tears spilled from his eyes as he curled into the ashes of his old home.

After a long moment of despair, a warmth flowed through him, disorienting him. It took him a moment to recognize it as Derek's life force, Derek's magic. It radiated from the hand on his back, soothing him from the inside out.

Stiles sat up slowly. He took the magic offered to him, channeling it down with his own and offering it to the essence buried in the ground by him. In the magic was a question, and the essence replied in a wordless way by doing as Stiles asked.

The ground behind the house began to stir as a twisting sprout pushed itself up and up and up, unnaturally fast and unnaturally large. Stiles watched breathlessly as the sprout grew to the size of a sapling in mere minutes, its green skin hardening to brown bark in the span of seconds, its long fingers branching and sprouting and then branching again into tributaries of green leaflets. The sapling seemed to glow in the night air, the magic forming it also breathing light from its skin.

Stiles wiped at his nose when the flow of magic ebbed away from him, signalling its unwillingness to draw any more energy from him. Stiles felt colder at the end of the process, but not so cold he was frightened by it. Derek's hand was cold, too, as he brushed at the tears on Stiles's face.

"Father," Stiles croaked in Lycan, nodding at the little sapling. "My father."

Derek nodded, brushing at his tears until they were just drying tracks.

"Feels like Stiles," Derek told him, smiling a little.

Stiles swallowed hard, rubbing at the ash on his face and hating the feel of it everywhere, in the air and on his clothes. The snow and rain had not washed away the devastation of this place. Stiles felt with certainty that it would not do so for a long time to come. 

"Noah," Stiles told him. It was important that Derek know his name. "He died before the fire. Before I did."

"Stiles did not enter the long sleep," Derek said softly, moving closer to him and shifting with uncertainty.

Stiles didn't answer. Instead he took the Wolf's hand in his and pressed his cold skin to his lips. He nuzzled into the hand as he transformed back into a Wolf.

They ran side by side through the night until they reached their home again.


End file.
